


a lucky recollection, it saved

by allthingsholy



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, because there's no such thing as too much pemberley fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthingsholy/pseuds/allthingsholy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzie packs up her costume theater into the same bag she used to drag it from Netherfield to San Francisco and all the way back home again. One end of her red Darcy bowtie hangs out the side and she can just see the edge of the newsboy hat beneath her blue plaid shirt. Lizzie runs her hands through her hair and sighs, because on the one hand it’s her thesis project and on the other hand, there are five sheets of high-class stationary tucked into the copy of <i>Persuasion</i> in her backpack. She tucks the bowtie to the bottom of her bag and keeps packing. Two months in LA with her sister. The Jane in her head says, “That’s not the same as leaving,” but Lizzie tucks that away too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pemberley fic! Because of course. For plot purposes, let’s assume that Lizzie starts at Pemberley the first week of January, yeah? Excellent. Big thanks to Rachel for the encouragement, big thanks Erica & Meg for the lookings-over. All remaining flaws are all on me. Title cobbled together from _P &P_ proper, because titling is harder than writing the damn thing.

++++

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Are you—”

“No.”

“I just—”

“No.”

Lizzie and Charlotte do not talk about Darcy.

++

One time, when Lizzie was eight and Lydia was four, Lizzie pushed her sister down the stairs. Well, just two or three of the stairs going down to the basement. And she didn’t exactly _push her_ , but she didn’t exactly _not push her_ , either. She was eight. Lydia was Lydia. Things happen. Lizzie never told anyone, not even Jane, _especially_ not Jane, and Lydia got a fat lip and then ate ice cream for dinner.

Lizzie’s not exactly sure how cosmic scales work, but when her independent study at the Gramercy Corporation falls through and Dr. Gardiner calls with a last minute invite to accompany her to Pemberley Industries, which happens to be where she’s going to consult for two months, and which happens to have a great internship and student development program, and which happens to have William Darcy’s name at the top of their corporate portfolio, well. Lizzie figures four-year-old Lydia is wincing against a smile as she sucks down a spoonful of mint chocolate chip and she doesn’t even know why.

++

“So you’re going to—”

“Yes.”

“And he’ll be—”

“Yes.”

“And he knows you’re—”

“Yes.”

Lizzie and Charlotte still do not talk about Darcy.

++

Lizzie leaves her packing until the last minute because Lizzie is not Jane and therefore doesn’t color-coordinate her earrings, belt buckles, and shoes for every outfit. She _does_ throw a few dresses in with her business casual daywear because she’s staying with Jane for two months and if she doesn’t bring down at least the basics of an adult’s wardrobe, her sister will be the Jane version of mad, which basically means she’ll make a “hmm” noise in the back of her throat and find something of her own Lizzie can borrow. 

Lizzie packs up her costume theater into the same bag she used to drag it from Netherfield to San Francisco and all the way back home again. One end of her red Darcy bowtie hangs out the side and she can just see the edge of the newsboy hat beneath her blue plaid shirt. Lizzie runs her hands through her hair and sighs, because on the one hand it’s her thesis project and on the other hand, there are five sheets of high-class stationary tucked into the copy of _Persuasion_ in her backpack. 

(The most nonsensical thing she’s been stuck on since Darcy gave her the letter is where he learned to write like that, the looping, slanted letters like her grandma used to make. Lizzie learned cursive in grade school and his writing wasn’t cursive, it was—penmanship, which is even more pretentious. For a minute she’d pictured him as a boy, a knotty hand on his shoulder while he traced the lines again and again, but imagining Darcy as a child is a fairly impossible undertaking. Mostly she just imagines him—shorter.)

She tucks away the image—and the bowtie—to the bottom of her bag and keeps packing. Two months in LA with her sister. The Jane in her head says, “That’s not the same as leaving,” but Lizzie tucks that away too.

++

Jane, of course, is happy to have her, so happy, _the happiest_ , and doesn’t let go of Lizzie’s hand once while she shows her around her apartment. (The tour lasts roughly ten seconds. Jane’s place is super tiny.) Lizzie unpacks her things into the empty half of the closet and then sits down on Jane’s bed and says nothing. Jane caught up on Lizzie’s videos the afternoon after she posted the first showdown with Darcy, because Lydia has an unlimited text plan and a constant need to dog on Lizzie’s love life. Jane’s face settles into something sympathetic and Lizzie can’t help but moan.

Jane sits down next to Lizzie and runs her fingers along the lines of the quilt beneath them. “So.” Her voice is Jane-perky, almost. Not quite. At the edges, at the corners of her smile, New Jane looks an awful lot like Old Jane. There are still whole days Lizzie spends thinking about how hard she wants to smack Bing Lee. “You ready for tomorrow?”

Lizzie falls back against the bed, her legs still dangling off the side. Her toes scratch against the rug on Jane’s floor. There are small silk flowers strung up around the bedroom windows, wisps of blue and pink and yellow against the white lace curtains. It’s looks almost exactly like the wallpaper in their family room back home, and Lizzie thinks of Jane’s half-empty closet and Jane’s half-empty heart and the parts of home Jane had to leave behind, and it makes her want to cry. Lizzie reaches out across the bed and taps her fingers against her sister’s hip. “Not really.”

Janes leans back onto her elbows and kicks her feet back and forth. “Just go in and be fabulous and it’ll be great.”

Lizzie rolls her eyes. “Just _be fabulous_? That’s your advice? For people who are not Jane Bennet, that’s kind of a tall order.”

“You know what I mean. Just.” Jane rolls onto her side and props her head up on her hand. Her hair’s in two pigtails that fall over her shoulders and she’s picking at the quilt with her nails and Lizzie might as well be ten years old again, sprawled out on Jane’s bed back home, talking about whatever ten year olds talked about in the mid-90s—Sweet Valley High, possibly, or maybe Pogs. Lizzie can’t remember what they thought was important back then, but she can remember Jane, stretched out exactly like this. Jane smiles and knocks her knee against Lizzie’s and says, “Just be yourself.”

Lizzie rolls onto her side and tugs at one of Jane’s pigtails. “Such a good big sister,” she says teasingly. Jane laughs.

++

Lizzie sees a lot of things her first afternoon at Pemberley—three floors of well laid out office space, lots of smiling employees, and the small office she’s been temporarily given on the building’s second floor. She does not see William Darcy. No newsboy hat. No bowtie. No one wearing a scarf, except a cheerful lady in the third floor break room who introduces herself as “Debbie Reynolds, please no jokes” and helps Lizzie find the milk for her tea. 

Lizzie spends a frankly ridiculous amount of time deciding how to set up the camera for the videos she’ll be shooting at Pemberley. Eventually she settles on pointing the camera toward the only open wall, which is blank except for a painting of a forest scene that’s either standard Corporate Art or, knowing Darcy, a rare and priceless work from some dead Italian. She sets up her first shot and hits record.

“Well, it’s my first official day at Pemberley Industries, and since I had about a thousand tweets asking me, no, I have not seen Darcy.” Not that she’s looking for him. Even if she is, she doesn’t find him. She spends the rest of the afternoon going over her project proposal and Pemberley’s organizational documents, and barely talks to anyone at all.

Truth be told, it’s actually a super boring day, and when Lizzie follows Dr. Gardiner out to the parking garage across the street, she decides that the strange, rolling feeling in her stomach is probably just hunger. 

++

Lizzie has been at Pemberley Industries for four days—four days and four hours, four days and four hours she has absolutely _not_ spent with a tight ball of anxiety coiled in the pit of her stomach and twisting up into her ribcage every time she turns a corner—before she sees Darcy. It’s lunchtime on their first Thursday in LA and Lizzie’s in the elevator with Dr. Gardiner and when the doors slide open on the fourth floor, there he is. He’s not wearing a bowtie (just a regular tie, grey, with white polka dots ( _polka dots_ )) and there’s a blonde girl next to him, her arm tucked into the crook of his elbow, and they’re _laughing_. Lizzie has .5 seconds to take it all in—the blonde’s head tipped toward Darcy’s shoulder, the fact that he’s got one dimple on his right cheek, the way his laugh’s a little lower than his normal speaking voice, the realization that she’s actually never seen him laugh before—and then reality snaps in at the same time Darcy locks eyes with her. The joy slides out of his face in an instant and even though the elevator’s standing still, Lizzie’s stomach has plummeted somewhere beneath the lobby floor. 

Darcy opens and closes his mouth a few times. “Lizzie,” he says, and the blonde uncoils her hand from around his elbow. When they board the elevator—which isn’t possibly big enough for four people, they have to be violating some overcrowding rule or weight restriction, Lizzie’s sure of it—Lizzie can see the usual tension creeping back up into Darcy’s shoulders, his neck, and working along the muscle of his jaw. Lizzie was sure he knew she was coming. She’d mentioned to Dr. Gardiner that she knew him but she’d left out some of the more incriminating details. Lizzie had seen Dr. Gardiner’s email to the HR rep, had seen Darcy’s name in the cc: line. She’d mentioned it in her videos. If she’s been a tight ball of nerves for the past four days and he didn’t even know she was here, well. The knot in Lizzie’s stomach tightens even more.

They all rock back on their heels a bit as the elevator starts to descend, and Darcy clears his throat and gestures to the blonde beside him. “Lizzie, Dr. Gardiner, this is my sister, Georgiana.”

Lizzie’s eyes go from Darcy’s face to Georgiana’s and back again. There are still five pages tucked into _Persuasion_ , now relocated to a stack next to her side of Jane’s bed, and a large chunk of those pages are to do with Georgiana. Darcy doesn’t say anything but Lizzie can tell he knows what she’s thinking, can tell she’s mentally reviewing every line of his letter that had to do with his sister. Georgiana doesn’t seem to notice anything. She takes a small step closer to Lizzie and holds out her hand. “Lizzie Bennet! Will mentioned you were coming. It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Gigi.” Lizzie takes Gigi’s outstretched hand and doesn’t quite miss the way that Darcy winces at his sister’s words. So he did know she was coming. 

By the time the elevator settles in the lobby, introductions have been made all around—Darcy and Dr. Gardiner, Gigi and Dr. Gardiner, everyone’s smiles just a shade past too wide. (Or maybe that’s just Lizzie projecting. The ache in her cheeks is radiating up toward her temples and as soon as Darcy let go of Dr. Gardiner’s hand he started a very thorough inspection of the toes of his shoes.) The doors open with a ding and Lizzie’s pretty sure she doesn’t imagine the increased speed with which Darcy steps out of the elevator.

Gigi clasps her hand around Lizzie’s wrist and pulls her a little bit closer, giving Darcy a smirk that Lizzie recognizes; little sisters will be little sisters. “Will and I have to go meet someone now, but tomorrow, let’s you and I get lunch?” Gigi’s smile is the brightest thing Lizzie’s seen all day and she even bounces up and down on her toes. Darcy continues to find his shoes to be the most fascinating thing in the whole lobby.

Lizzie covers Gigi’s hand with her own, just for a minute. “Lunch tomorrow sounds great.”

Gigi squeezes her wrist and then lets go. “Fantastic. I’ll come by your desk and get you. Where is it?”

“Oh, umm.” Lizzie’s mind is blank, totally empty, and she sputters and tries to remember.

Darcy—still with his eyes on the toes of his shoes—says, “John Mercer’s old office, on the second floor.” His voice sounds flat, like a minute ago he hadn’t been laughing at all. The knot in Lizzie’s stomach tightens again.

They make their goodbyes and set off in opposite directions. Dr. Gardiner has the good grace not to say anything at all on their way to restaurant, and when they do talk, it’s about the corporate structure of Pemberley and not about an elevator full of tension and awkward smiles. 

++

If Lizzie’s first impression of William Darcy was at one end of a spectrum, her reaction to Gigi Darcy is at totally the opposite end. In Lizzie’s first week of knowing her, Gigi takes her to lunch at an _amazing_ sushi place and shows her a cluster of incredible second hand clothing shops that Jane will _love_. They eat lunch on Friday and again on Sunday, when they split a pitcher of margaritas and eat way too much guacamole.

They talk about: contemporary chick lit and the pros and cons of reality television; late-90s boy bands and the formative experience of The Babysitters Club; British pop music and which Bronte sister was the craziest. Every once in awhile, Lizzie has to remind herself that Gigi is only a year older than Lydia, fresh out of college and three years younger than Lizzie. She’s grounded in a way Lydia isn’t, tempered in a way Lizzie probably wasn’t at her age, and when she talks about the things she’s done and the places she’s been, it’s warm and inviting and Lizzie leans forward on her elbows and soaks in every word. 

They do not talk about: George Wickham, at all, or Darcy, hardly ever. (Gigi calls him _Will_ , which Lizzie is definitely not ever going to do, barring some sort of life and death situation where it saves the President’s life. _Never._ ) Beyond the first few awkward minutes—“Will and Caroline mentioned the Bennets plenty, but I don’t get to talk to either of them enough for real details, tell me _everything_ ”—they hardly come up at all. Lizzie spends their first lunch together worried she’ll blurt out something awful, like, “So is your brother a total asshole or not?” or “Does he fall for all the girls who are super mean to him?” or “Is Caroline a lying bitch to everyone or just me?” Halfway through their pitcher of margaritas, Lizzie nearly makes Gigi promise never to google “Lizzie Bennet,” but Lizzie keeps her mouth full of tortilla chips until the urge passes.

(Gigi does tell one story about her brother, about a trip to Hawaii with their parents when they both got stung by jellyfish. “Will was 18 and I was 12,” she says, “and he carried me up the beach, all the way back to our parents.” Her smile is equal parts fond and sad, but then she lifts her foot with a laugh and shows Lizzie the faint scar that wraps around one ankle. Lizzie pours them both another margarita and asks whether Stacy or Claudia was Gigi’s favorite babysitter.)

Lizzie makes the mistake of thinking Gigi completely unlike her brother, but she still sees Darcy echoed in the narrowing of Gigi’s eyes at her menu, the bend of her neck as she leans toward Lizzie to whisper about their waiter. Lizzie can’t help but see Darcy in the times when Gigi is silent. Though she won’t say it’s on purpose, Lizzie fills their afternoons with noise.

++

Right outside Lizzie’s temporary office is this big conference room and at the start of Lizzie’s second week at Pemberley, a whole team floods in and sets up, files and folders and charts and projectors. Every time Lizzie walks by and peers through the windows, she sees a whole group of them sat around the table or pacing in the empty spaces around the edges of the room. From the break room just past Lizzie’s office, if she stands in front of the coffee and hot water machine, she can see right through the conference room windows. On Tuesday, Lizzie looks up from making her tea and there’s Darcy, one hand raised to scribble something on the whiteboard, the other pointing at something on the wall that she can’t see. Everyone in the room has their eyes on him and he’s more animated than Lizzie’s ever seen him. He talks with his hands, these great big movements as he points around the room at the rest of the team, at the words on the board, at the charts on the wall. Lizzie doesn’t even realize how long she’s been standing there watching him until the door opens and Mrs. Reynolds comes walking out, headed straight for her.

“Ms. Bennet,” she says, slipping past Lizzie to grab a coffee packet. “How have you enjoyed your time at Pemberley so far?”

Lizzie looks down at the tea in her hands, now steeped probably to the point of bitterness, and says, “Good, it’s been really great, it’s great.” Her voice is squeaky and nearly shrill and Lizzie winces. Mrs. Reynolds doesn’t seem to notice. “What are—” Lizzie pokes at the tea bag in her mug awkwardly. “How’s the meeting going? You guys have been in there for awhile.”

Mrs. Reynolds stirs milk into her coffee and then pushes the carton toward Lizzie. “It’s a new pitch for a big client, Mr. Darcy wants it to be 100% ready before we meet with them. He’s a bit of a perfectionist, always has been.”

Lizzie hasn’t asked Gigi anything, but Mrs. Reynolds’ eyes are lively and warm and Lizzie can’t help herself. “How long have you worked here?”

Mrs. Reynolds cups her hands around her mug and smiles. “Likely longer than you’ve been alive, dear. I worked for Mr. Darcy Sr. and now I work for Mr. Darcy Jr.” She leans forward, all smiles and conspiracy and affection, and whispers, “I say Mr. Darcy Jr. now, but I’ve known him since his mother called him Willy and he took naps on the floor beneath his father’s desk.” 

Back in the conference room, Darcy is sketching out a proposal on the whiteboard, the slashes of the marker swift and slanted. Lizzie shuts her eyes and clenches her jaw—five pages of thick stationary covered in his writing tucked between the pages of a book beside her bed. In her mind, she sees a knobby hand on his shoulder and his arms clasped around his knees beneath a big oak desk, scenes half guessed and half imagined, and it’s a little easier now to think of him small and reckless, his hand tucked into Gigi’s as they walked these very halls.

Lizzie spoons the tea bag out of her mug and adds a splash of milk from the carton Mrs. Reynolds hands her. “It seems like a lovely place to work,” Lizzie says. Mrs. Reynolds smiles. 

When Lizzie walks the hallway back to her office, she keeps her eyes off the conference room windows and glued to the carpet in front of her feet.

++

Lizzie’s posted three videos since she got to Pemberley. She absolutely does not check their stats anymore—she had 347 @replies after the whole thing with Darcy, so her relationship with the internet is _complicated_ —but Charlotte emails her to tell her viewership is up and everyone wants to know more about Pemberley and Darcy. Somewhere along the line, Lizzie’s life turned into a soap opera. (“A super lame soap opera, _please_ ,” the Lydia voice in her head says.)

She’s been making videos for months and suddenly Lizzie’s more conscious of her words than she ever was before. She hasn’t gone back to watch any of her old videos—partly due to embarrassment, partly due to lack of time, partly due to reasons she can’t and won’t look at too closely—but she remembers them being easier to record. Set up the camera, hit the red button, talk until Charlotte told her to stop. Now she sits in her office at Pemberley and weighs her words more carefully, picking and choosing the things she’s willing to say about the people who may or may not see them.

Darcy hasn’t said anything about the videos and she’s not even sure if he’s still watching them. She records two floors below his office and there’s a ridiculous part of her that almost wants to whisper every time she mentions his name—which only happens in passing. Lizzie keeps her features neutral the few times he does come up; the newsboy hat and red bowtie are shoved to the very bottom of the bag she’s got stashed in one of her desk drawers. Lizzie purposely hasn’t mentioned meeting Gigi, who has texted her twice since Sunday and invited her to play tennis this weekend.

According to Lydia, Lizzie’s silence on the subject of Darcy has the viewers up in arms. She sends Lizzie emails with screenshots of her youtube page, comments from people with a questionable grasp of basic grammar who want to know if she and Darcy have made amends, have made a sextape, have made a baby. Okay, her relationship with the internet is _very complicated_.

Lizzie sits in her office at Pemberley and tries to figure out what to say. Across the hall, Darcy’s leading a meeting and even through her closed door, she hears a voice that might be his. The red record light stares back at her.

++

Pemberley isn’t a big enough company to maintain any type of long-term avoidance plan, which is why Lizzie doesn’t even try. She mostly drifts back and forth between Dr. Gardiner’s office and her own, bracing as she walks around corners in case her life decides to make the jump from soap opera to romantic comedy. (Romantic comedy at this point seems pretty unlikely. The minute Darcy watched her videos, that was probably off the table. Plus, Lizzie doesn’t have the bone structure for that type of storyline, she’s not Meg Ryan.) Dr. Gardiner, it turns out, hasn’t watched Lizzie’s videos, which Lizzie finds out at the end of their second week at Pemberley, when Dr. Gardiner comes in with two steaming mugs of tea and the most incredulous smirk Lizzie’s ever seen on a grown woman’s face. (Lizzie first had Dr. Gardiner in her first year of grad school, for a class on internet culture and marketing. She’d given Lizzie her first C. Lizzie then gave _her_ a thirty-minute speech on the social structure of the internet and the implications of new media on different types of online subcultures. The C became a B and Lizzie became one of Dr. Gardiner’s favorite students.)

Dr. Gardiner walks into her office—up on the fourth floor, with a terrific view of a neighboring church—and sets Lizzie’s cup down in front of her and says, apropos of nothing, “Lizzie, I don’t usually get involved in the personal lives of my students because it’s both inappropriate and I don’t usually care, but.” The space of her pause is time enough for Lizzie to count how many steps it would take to get to the door, and then the stairwell, and then outside the building and into oncoming traffic. She doesn’t move a muscle. “Is there something going on between you and William Darcy that would affect your participation in this independent study?”

Lizzie feels her face go cold and her palms start to sweat. She’s been waiting for this conversation. Not necessarily from Dr. Gardiner, but she’s been waiting for someone to say to her, “Lizzie, why are you at Pemberley, _are you out of your mind_?” Truth be told, she thought it would be Darcy, but beyond 30 seconds in an elevator and his constant presence twenty feet from her office door, she hasn’t seen or heard from him at all. She’s prepared no acceptable answer to the question, so she works her a jaw for a minute and says nothing.

Lizzie crosses and uncrosses her legs, keeps her voice flat—which is probably a dead giveaway, why doesn’t she have Lydia’s knack for lying, _dammit_ —and says, “Why do you ask?”

Lizzie’s got her eyes fixed on Dr. Gardiner’s knees so she can’t see her professor’s expression when she says, “Because I ran into him getting coffee just now and he asked about you? And then looked like he wanted to throw up and die?”

It’s only sheer force of will and the thought of having to restart her whole project that stops Lizzie from dropping her head into her hands and telling Dr. Gardiner everything. Not that Dr. Gardiner won’t find out—she’ll _have_ to watch the videos eventually. Lizzie knows that playing fast and loose with the truth _now_ will only lead to questions _later_ , but she just tightens her hands around her too hot mug of tea and straightens her spine. Dr. Gardiner waits, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“I do know Darcy from home,” Lizzie finally says. “And he was at Collins & Collins when I did my independent study there as well.” Lizzie takes a sip of her too hot tea and winces against the heat on her tongue. “We interacted socially.” God, she sounds so formal. She sounds like a robot. She sounds like _Darcy_.

Dr. Gardiner nods her head. The look on her face is entirely too knowing, a little bit concerned and mostly puzzled. “Lizzie, if you coming here is going to affect your ability to complete your independent study, we’ll find something else. I know that I don’t know the whole situation, but based on his demeanor today and your interactions in the elevator last week”—of course Dr. Gardiner had noticed four floors’ worth of awkwardness, _dammit again_ —“if you’d rather complete your project somewhere else, you need to say so. I know grad school isn’t _quite_ the real world yet, but we should maintain at least the illusion of professionalism.” Dr. Gardiner smiles, but there’s a reasonable dash of actual _warning_ at the corners of her eyes. She turns back to her computer screen. “Please let me know by the end of the week so I can find something else for you.”

Lizzie picks up the business plans she’s been reading. “Okay,” she says. It takes her four attempts to actually get through the first page.

++

Lizzie would never admit it if asked, but she’s re-read Darcy’s letter more than a handful of times since she got to LA. Jane caught her at it once last weekend, came out of the shower and into her bedroom and found Lizzie on the bed with the thick, worn-edged stationary in her hands. Jane had kept herself busy towel-drying her hair, had averted her eyes to the mirror to give Lizzie time to slide the paper back into its envelope and between the pages of her novel. Jane hadn’t said anything, but when she’d climbed into bed beside Lizzie that night, she’d scooted a little closer than she’d needed to, the point of her elbow brushing up against Lizzie’s arm.

Jane had said, barely more than a whisper, “You want to talk about it?”

Lizzie had listened to the city, to the sounds that were so different than the ones they’d left at home. She’d wanted to ask about Bing, about how big the other side of Jane’s bed feels when Lizzie isn’t there to fill it. Every day, Lizzie goes into Pemberley and sees happy people at a well run company, the tasteful art in the hallways and Mrs. Reynolds holding the elevator door for her. Lizzie stands at the coffee machine and sees a whole room laughing at something Darcy’s just said. And then she comes home to Jane’s half-filled, still-waiting apartment and Jane’s optimism and Jane’s new strength. Every time Lizzie reads the letter she tries to align the parts of Darcy she sees with the pieces of Darcy she saw, but it’s all round holes and square pegs and nothing gets any clearer at all.

Jane’s elbow had nudged hers just a little. Lizzie had chewed her lip a while and then tucked the quilt up under her chin. “No,” she’d said. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep.

++

Lizzie’s always considered herself a fairly rational, responsible person, willing to get her hands dirty to do whatever needs doing. Sensible. _Adult._ In the time between stepping off the elevator and knocking on Darcy’s office door, she rethinks her entire approach to life and considers going back to her office and lying down beneath her desk. She doesn’t. (Barely.)

Mrs. Reynolds is at her desk outside Darcy’s office, phone slotted between her ear and shoulder, but she waves Lizzie toward the open door with a friendly smile, which only makes the pit of Lizzie’s stomach open up a little wider to swallow the majority of her insides. Lizzie’s pretty sure her heart’s still intact because it’s gotten twice as loud as usual.

(She’s not nervous exactly, it’s just that this conversation—which she doesn’t want to be having in the first place but probably should’ve had two weeks ago—could go any one of a number of ways. Being prepared for all of those outcomes simultaneously has Lizzie wishing she’d skipped lunch and downed a bottle of Tums instead. Hindsight.)

Lizzie tries to look as casual as possible when she walks past Mrs. Reynold’s desk and knocks on Darcy’s doorframe. She shifts her weight from foot to foot and straightens the bottom of her sweater and feels like maybe she’s having a heart attack.

Darcy’s at his desk, head bent over a folder and pen flicking back and forth between his fingers. He freezes when he sees Lizzie and even with an entire room between them, she can see the muscle in his jaw start to bulge. 

Once when Lizzie was in high school she had an English teacher who taught Romeo and Juliet in the most simplistic way possible and basically blamed all of the ridiculous things that happen in the play on Juliet’s childishness and emotional immaturity. Lizzie had titled her essay “Reasons Why This Play Was Taught All Wrong” and when she had to go apologize—seriously, she _had to_ , Principal Cho had no patience for feminist literary criticism—she’d been an anxious wreck. It was the only time she ever got into trouble, academically. The knot she’d had in her stomach that day felt a lot like the knot in her stomach when William Darcy stands up out of his chair and waves her into the room.

Lizzie’s pretty sure there isn’t a standard way to begin a conversation where one party committed online libel and the other made a horrifying declaration of _feelings_ , so she chews her lip a minute and then says, “Umm, so.” It’s a great opening.

Darcy taps his knuckles on his desk and clears his throat. Twice. Stellar rebuttal.

Fuck it. Lizzie takes a breath and closes her eyes—literally closes her eyes, because she’s an _adult_ —and says, “I know that things between us have been a little up and down, and that’s sort of a big understatement, but I just wanted to make sure that it’s okay that I’m here. At Pemberley. Working at Pemberley. Here.” The inside of Lizzie’s mouth feels like a brillo pad. This has been her best idea yet.

When she opens her eyes again, Darcy’s staring at his blotter. He’s got on grey suspenders and a red shirt and Lizzie can see the knot of his skinny black tie moving up and down while he works his throat. “Yes,” Darcy says finally, “it’s fine that you’re here. I’m—” He looks up and meets her gaze and Lizzie manages this weak smile, this quivering, uncertain pull of her lips. It feels mean. Darcy just takes a breath and says, “I think that Pemberley Industries will benefit from your insight and I hope that you’ll find the time spent here to be a valuable contribution to your project.” 

There were six months when Lizzie would’ve rolled her eyes at how dispassionate Darcy’s voice is when he speaks, how clipped his consonants are and the awkward way his hands clasp and unclasp at his sides. There were six months when Lizzie wouldn’t have noticed the creases at the corners of his eyes or the fact that since he raised his gaze, he hasn’t looked away from her face. She notices now. She doesn’t entirely know what to make of it, but—she notices. 

Lizzie’s tongue still feels stuck to the roof of her mouth, so it takes extra effort when she says, “And we’re—okay?” It takes extra effort for a lot of reasons. She waves her hand back and forth, gesturing between them. Darcy nods, just once. He still hasn’t looked away from her face.

Lizzie puts a little more effort into the smile she gives him. Darcy doesn’t say anything else and now that she’s said what she came to, the silence shifts from anxious to awkward. Lizzie looks around the office and feels—suddenly, belatedly—intimidated by how beautiful it is. There are bookshelves along one wall with windows opposite; the desk is wooden and massive, the cabinets behind it filled with knick-knacks that seem oddly personal and cluttered for his office; on a table to Lizzie’s right is an array of photographs in mismatched frames. Lizzie makes herself look back at Darcy and nods. “I should be getting back to Dr. Gardiner,” she says, “I have—”

“We’ve been working on the Rowley launch this week,” Darcy interrupts. “They’re hoping to use web content to increase traffic to their online features. It’s an interesting campaign.” 

Lizzie nods uncertainly. His consonants are still clipped. The way his eyebrows knot together makes him look like Gigi.

Darcy takes a step back and starts to move around his desk. “I’d meant to mention.” He clears his throat again. Maybe it’s a nervous tick and she never noticed. (She’s not sure when she started classifying his behavior as “nervous” rather than “prickish,” but she’s not interested in figuring that out right now.) “If you want to sit in while the team brainstorms some of the material. We spent the week finalizing the process for the roll-out and nailing down most of the marketing objectives, but we still have to develop the content. I thought with your experience with web content, it might be useful to you.” 

Her experience with web content. Her videos. Lizzie’s hands curl into fists just out of habit and the heart attack feeling that had started to subside comes raging back. Darcy stands in front his desk, all awkward hands and awkward shoulders. Lizzie just sort of nods. If she weren’t two steps from what feels like a panic attack, she’d be more excited about the opportunity, about the project itself, but as it stands she mostly just doesn’t want to talk about this ever again. At all.

Which is of course when Darcy says, a little more quietly than necessary (and Lizzie’s suddenly really aware of the open door behind her), “I’m not still watching them. Just, so you don’t have to—worry about that.” Lizzie’s not looking directly at him, but she’s pretty sure he actually _winces_. She knows for sure that she does. She tries to hide it with a nod, but it probably still shows.

The awkward silence is worse, way worse, the longer that Lizzie doesn’t say anything, so she says, “The Rowley thing sounds interesting. I’d like to sit in, if I won’t be in the way.”

“You won’t be,” Darcy says. He looks relieved to be talking business and by the time he’s done explaining the basics of the campaign--still with his back to his desk, half a room away from Lizzie--the air in the room is almost breathable again. Lizzie’s heart feels less like it’s going to fall out of her chest than it did before. 

“I’ll have Mrs. Reynolds send you an invite to the meeting on Monday,” Darcy finishes. 

Lizzie nods. “Thanks for the invitation.” She takes a step back toward the door; she can hear Mrs. Reynolds outside. “I should probably go find Dr. Gardiner.” 

Just as Lizzie turns to go, Darcy says, “Gigi mentioned you’re playing tennis on Saturday.” She turns back to find the smallest trace of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “Watch her backhand. It’s vicious.” 

Lizzie narrows her eyes but her lips pull themselves into the tiniest grin. “Good tip,” she says.

++

Gigi flattens her--except for the game where she almost certainly lets Lizzie win. 

Her backhand’s more than vicious. 

Lizzie has a great time anyway.

++++


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzie tries her best to concentrate, but she only hears about every third word that Abby says. She’s got one half of her brain watching Abby sketch out possible service app tie-ins and the other half on the toes of Darcy’s shoes, which she can just see out of the corner of her right eye. (Not that she’s concentrating on his _shoes_ ; it’s the rest of him, the living, breathing, right-behind-her rest of him that’s so distracting. She doesn’t blurt out, “All of the 100,000 people who watch my videos are basically clamoring for your face, sir,” because that would be _horrible_ , but it’s a close thing. The room feels vaguely like it’s 115 degrees.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Meg, Erica, & Steph for the lookings-over. (Steph knows which part is especially for her.) Thanks to (Other) Meg, Marie, & Rachel for the cheerleading. Sorry that what was once a two-parter is now a three-parter, and sorry that this has been Jossed all to hell, but. Title's still from _P &P_, all weak spots are my own fault.

++++

Lizzie plays tennis with Gigi on Saturday and spends most of Sunday nursing her wounds. ( _Losing_ isn’t an adequate verb choice; _whomping_ barely conveys how bad it was, and Lizzie’s more than sure that Gigi pulled half her punches. Girl’s got game.) Jane brings her ice for her shoulder and looks secretly amused at Lizzie’s pain. New Jane is _fresh_.

“At one point,” Lizzie says, “I wanted to lie down on the sidelines and cry.”

Jane’s stitching a new collar onto one of her dresses, pins sticking out at the corner of her mouth. “Didn’t you know that she was _really good_?”

“Catherine de Bourgh said that she was really good. Catherine de Bourgh also said that Caroline is a shining example of the perfect woman. Catherine de Bourgh is sometimes wrong.”

If Jane’s bothered by the mention of Caroline, it doesn’t show. She picks at the seam she’s stitching and says, “Well, apparently she wasn’t wrong about this.”

“Apparently not.” Lizzie’s been camped on the couch for the majority of the morning, delaying the thing she really needs to do: record a new video. Rationally, she knows that her failure to even mention Darcy is more conspicuous than it would be if she just stopped censoring herself, especially now that she’s sure he’s not watching. It should be liberating, in a way, but mostly it just makes things worse. Talking about him behind his back again makes her feel weird in a way that she didn’t before. Not that she’d go back to ragging on him all the time anyway, but.

Lizzie watches Jane, the methodical motion of her stitching, the back and forth of her hand. In the end, Lizzie drags Jane into her video and makes her update everyone on what’s going on in _her_ life instead of Lizzie’s. It’s a cop-out, but it’s better than nothing. 

++

Lizzie spends Monday morning observing the team putting together the content for the Rowley campaign. Everyone’s upbeat and enthusiastic and sort of ridiculously nice. They don’t exclude her because she’s just some _student_ ; one of the guys, Chris, shows her pictures of his _super adorable_ kids, and one of the women, Abby, tells her about a local farmer’s market that she especially loves. By the time they break for lunch, Lizzie’s even made a contribution to the conversation. Out loud. It’s just a small idea, but it goes on the whiteboard up there with everyone else’s; it makes her feel a little more comfortable to have done something besides take notes for her final report.

Lizzie’s phone buzzes halfway through the afternoon, a full six hours after her video was posted. It’s Charlotte. “Hiding behind Jane now? I’m onto you, Bennet.” Lizzie rolls her eyes and pushes her phone under her notebook and goes back to watching Abby list possible ways of tying the new content to the company’s existing services. Abby’s in the middle of sketching out an idea when the door opens up and Darcy walks in, because of course he does. Last week, Lizzie spent an amount of time she’s not comfortable dissecting standing in the break room watching him develop this campaign, so it makes sense that he’d check in on how it’s progressing. He waves at Abby to continue and sits down in a chair at the back.

Lizzie tries her best to concentrate, but she only hears about every third word that Abby says. She’s got one half of her brain watching Abby sketch out possible service app tie-ins and the other half on the toes of Darcy’s shoes, which she can just see out of the corner of her right eye. (Not that she’s concentrating on his _shoes_ ; it’s the rest of him, the living, breathing, right-behind-her rest of him that’s so distracting. She doesn’t blurt out, “All of the 100,000 people who watch my videos are basically clamoring for your face, sir,” because that would be _horrible_ , but it’s a close thing. The room feels vaguely like it’s 115 degrees.)

Lizzie takes an inconspicuous deep breath and refocuses on Abby, because she’s an _adult_ and a _professional_ and she’s here to _learn_. 

Abby’s outlining the way the apps could interact with the different content they’ve already sketched out, and when she gets to Lizzie’s earlier contribution, she tips her head to the side and says, “Actually, Lizzie, this is a great idea. Can you see any ways to really tie these together?”

Lizzie sits up in her chair and taps her pen one, two, three times on her notebook, and when she opens her mouth, she’s talking about content tie-in and structuring the narrative of the campaign to reflect the company’s new slogan, and Abby’s nodding along and sketching out a plan on the whiteboard. Chris smiles at her from across the table. Lizzie’s heart is pounding in her chest and she’s pretty sure her face is a little red, but she feels intelligent and proud and _useful_. She’s not talking about wanting to throw up at all. It’s amazing.

When she’s done writing out the proposal, Abby looks at Darcy, still sitting at the back of the room. Lizzie turns in her chair to look at him too. He’s got his hands clasped between his knees, eyes fixed to the board, and he nods his head and says, “This sounds great.” He stands up and steps toward Abby and takes the marker from her hand. “But what about this, too.”

They spend an hour working with Lizzie’s idea—all of them, Lizzie and Darcy and Abby and Chris and everyone else whose names Lizzie can’t remember—and for the sixty minutes they bounce ideas around, Lizzie can meet Darcy’s eyes and everything. She says, “And if we did _this_ ,” and he says, “Then we could do _that_ ,” and it’s like it’s not even awkward at all, like they’re just two people at work who’ve never talked about feelings in their lives.

When they’re done, Darcy caps the marker and leans back against the wall and says, “I like it. What do you guys think?” He looks at Lizzie, sat in the middle of the room and feeling like she belongs, and it’s easy, the way she smiles up at him and nods her head. He very nearly smiles back.

++

She spends most of the next two days in the same conference room, storyboarding on one side of the whiteboard and highlighting the campaign tie-ins on the other. Darcy comes in and out between other meetings and sits in the same chair in the back. Sometimes he’s quiet and sometimes he’s not, but Lizzie’s always super aware of his presence. It stops being distracting after a while, but she still sits up straighter when he comes into the room.

She stays focused on the work 99% of the time when he’s around, but sometimes, in some of the randomest moments, she can’t help but get distracted—by the way Darcy tugs on the end of his tie when he’s listening, by the way he smiles at Mrs. Reynolds when she brings him down paperwork to sign. Chris cracks a joke in the middle of one of their discussions and Darcy almost _laughs_. Lizzie spent a month at Netherfield watching Darcy work, hunched over his laptop and scowling at the screen, and never saw any of this agreeableness. She can’t even remember seeing him crack a smile.

She comes into the break room on Wednesday to make tea for the next round of discussions and Darcy’s there, stirring milk into a coffee mug with the Pemberley logo on the side. She has to reach around him to get to the tea bags and she can see his gears turning, see the effort that goes into making his mouth curve up into the smallest smile. It’s not that it looks forced, exactly, it just looks—intentional.

He hands her the milk without being asked and then clears his throat. Lizzie’s hands flatten against the countertop because now that she’s noticed how often he stops and starts and stalls around her, she can’t _not_ notice it. He taps his stirrer against the rim of his mug and says, “I think it’s going well this week. You’re really—” Tap tap. “You’ve liked it?”

For a guy who frequently gives boardroom presentations, he has an uncanny knack for not finishing his sentences around her. Lizzie makes herself look up and meet his eyes. “It’s been great. I’ve really learned a lot.”

Darcy smiles again—wider, almost natural-looking—and nods his head and almost but doesn’t quite say something else to her before he picks up his mug and heads back to the conference room. Lizzie pokes at her tea bag and stares at the milk carton.

She spent a month with him at Netherfield cataloging all his faults, and she wonders, not for the first time, if maybe he took away different things from the time they spent under the same roof. Maybe he learned how she took her tea and what her favorite authors were. He was rough around the edges, sure, and occasionally more than a little bit rude, but maybe Lizzie was seeing what she wanted to see. Maybe he made it easy, but maybe she made it worse.

Something hot and uncomfortable settles itself in Lizzie’s stomach. She spends the rest of the afternoon waiting for the conference room door to open up and for Darcy to walk in, but he never does.

++

“So you’ve seen him every day this week?”

“Yes.”

“And talked to him every day this week?”

“Yes.”

“And had generally pleasant interactions with him? Every day this week?”

“Yes.”

Lizzie and Charlotte finally talk about Darcy. Lizzie’s managed to worm her way out of this conversation every time Charlotte’s brought it up so far. (Actually, it’s one of the only times that Lizzie’s been truly thankful for how demanding and innocently overbearing Ricky Collins is. Charlotte’s been too busy to pester her beyond the occasional text and email. Lizzie’s partly thankful for it, partly she just misses her best friend.)

Jane’s out with one of her work friends and Lizzie’s halfway through a bottle of wine because of _reasons_ , and Charlotte’s asking a lot of questions and not saying much in response. Lizzie taps her fingers against the arm of the couch and sighs. “Maybe coming here wasn’t a good idea.”

On the other end of the line, Lizzie can hear Charlotte moving things around her desk. “First of all, you didn’t actually have a whole lot of other options. And secondly, I think maybe it was a good thing. Gives you a chance to—reevaluate William Darcy.”

“ _Reevaluate William Darcy_? Charlotte, this isn’t a Colin Firth movie. We’re not going to kiss in the snow while a camera pans around us.”

“No,” Charlotte says, “this is California so that’s pretty impossible.”

“For a multitude of reasons. The guy spent several hours watching me call him an asshole, I’m pretty sure he’s changed his mind about me.” Lizzie pauses. “Hopefully.”

“Lizzie.” Charlotte has this tone of voice she uses, this uniquely dealing-with-Lizzie exasperation, and Lizzie can hear it all the way from San Francisco. “I’m not saying you should be kissing him in the snow or anything, but I thought you were coming around on Darcy.”

Lizzie pours herself another drink because self-reflection is thirsty work. She knows that Charlotte’s right, that her loathing of Darcy hasn’t so much vanished as spun out in front of her to monopolize most of her non-working hours. But there’s only so much personal growth Lizzie can own up to, out loud, at any one time, so she taps her fingers against the arm of the couch and sighs. “Okay, maybe he doesn’t sit around at night listening to Bon Iver and drinking tea steeped from the tears of hungry orphans. That doesn’t mean he’s a _saint_.”

Charlotte laughs; it’s tinny through the receiver and makes her feel farther away than ever. “I didn’t say he was perfect. The guy’s social skills could admittedly use a little _finessing_ ,” she says. “I just think maybe your first through fiftieth impressions of him were a little—” Lizzie can hear Charlotte choosing her words carefully, hear her stepping around the more exposed and tender of Lizzie’s feelings. It’s something Lizzie’s been avoiding lately, examining her own emotions. There was a reason she was sort of dodging Charlotte’s calls.

Charlotte must find too many soft spots in Lizzie’s rigid exterior because she doesn’t finish her thought. The line’s silent for awhile, just the sound of Charlotte’s breathing and the ring of Lizzie’s wineglass on the end table. 

When they finally disconnect—with lots of promises to be better about calling, better at staying in touch, and a few hushed impressions of Ricky Collins—Lizzie drains the rest of her wine glass in one. She draws her feet up under herself and listens to Jane’s empty apartment for a long time.

++

On Friday, Lizzie gets a text from Fitz as she’s leaving work. He’d texted when she first got to Los Angeles— _In Sacramento for two weeks with heathens. They don’t even like cats, Lizzie. They’re dog people. How._ Besides that, she hasn’t much heard from him at all. 

Lizzie’s riding the elevator with Dr. Gardiner, who’s been shuttling her to and from the office for two weeks, and her phone vibrates from within her purse. _Lizzie B, pack your bags. We’re going out._ Lizzie’s got her thumbs on her touchscreen when the elevator doors open, and when she goes to follow Dr. Gardiner to the parking garage, there’s a hand suddenly at her elbow.

“Lizzie!” She only sees Fitz’s smile for the split second before he crushes her into a hug. Over his shoulder, Gigi waves. “We were just on our way up to kidnap you. Tapas!”

Dr. Gardiner’s looking back and forth from Lizzie to Fitz to Gigi and back, and Lizzie makes what she hopes is an appropriate facial expression and curls up her shoulder. “Umm, Dr. Gardiner, this is Fitz and you remember Gigi. They’re—”

“So please to meet you,” Fitz says, taking her outstretched hand. “Lizzie’s told us great things about you.”

“Great things,” Gigi echoes, next in line for a this-time-we’re-not-surrounded-by-an-elevator-full- of-tension handshake. Lizzie’s still gaping back and forth between them when Gigi says, “You don’t mind if we steal her, do you?”

Dr. Gardiner smiles and for a second looks like she remembers being 25. She nods once at Lizzie, eyes mischievous, and says, “I’ll see you Monday, Lizzie.”

Lizzie barely has time to wave goodbye before Fitz slings her bag over his shoulder and hustles her off into the car.

The thing about tapas is that they’re very small plates of very small bits of food, and Lizzie doesn’t have the forethought to eat quite enough of them. And Fitz and Gigi have a plan, a very cunning plan, to get Lizzie a little bit drunk. Lizzie doesn’t catch on until after the tapas place, when they sit her down at a karaoke bar and give her her third mai tai, which is a shame because karaoke is the worst and fruit drinks make her feel ridiculous. They make her feel like Lydia.

“I feel like Lydia,” Lizzie says, kicking her heels against the booth. The lights at the bar keep doing this thing, this weird, clubby thing, and Lizzie watches bands of pink and blue and purple swirl up and down the walls and over the face of a guy struggling through “Midnight Train to Georgia.” Fitz is talking about Sacramento— _“Dog people, guys, I don’t get it_ ”—and Gigi keeps checking her phone. There’s a persistent piece of pineapple at the bottom of Lizzie’s glass that she’s trying (ineffectually) to skewer with her straw.

Somewhere in the middle of their third round—two different people sang “Achey, Breaky Heart,” everything she thought she knew about LA is a lie—Lizzie finds herself in the midst of a very heated debate on the relative merits of Ryan Gosling’s face, and judging by the way Gigi rolls her eyes at Fitz, it’s a conversation they’ve had before. He throws a friendly arm around Lizzie’s shoulders and says, “Back me up, Bennet. Gosling: yay or nay?”

Lizzie’s seen _The Notebook_ more than enough times. (Lydia got the disc jammed in their DVD player the summer it came out and even Lizzie’s near physical aversion to all things Nicholas Sparks wasn’t enough to prise it loose. In the end, their dad had finagled it out using his model train tools. The player still won’t close quite right, even all these years later.) Lizzie screws up her face and pokes at her pineapple. “Absolutely yay.” 

Fitz laughs into his beer. “Mm, blonds.”

“Ugh, blonds,” Gigi says, leaning back against the cushions in the booth. “I saw Zachary Levi in that Starbucks on Wabash last summer. I’d let him on the cover of _my_ People magazine.”

Lizzie snorts into the last bit of her mai tai. She’s hung around Gigi enough now to know that she’s nothing at all like Darcy, nothing like what Lizzie assumed Darcy would be. Gigi’s kind of willowy and loose, blonde hair in ringlets and bangles at her wrists. She talks softly but isn’t quiet, smiles at strangers and leaves great tips. She’s got this ridiculous, barking laugh sometimes and one dimple on her right cheek.

Lizzie watches Gigi’s face, turned blue from the light of her phone, and thinks about Carter’s and George Wickham and the incredible ease of Gigi’s smile. She retroactively hates that scheming, lying swim monster even more than she did before. Ugh blonds, indeed.

After a passable rendition of “Proud Mary” from a middle-aged maybe-soccer mom, Gigi excuses herself to the bathroom and Lizzie bites her lip and doubles down on the thing she’s wanted to ask all night. Darcy’s name has been threatening to trip out of Lizzie’s brain and right into her mouth since the moment they got into Fitz’s car. Lizzie sucks on the ice from her drink and watches Gigi make her way across the room and as soon as she’s out of sight, Lizzie leans over and grabs his wrist. “Fitz. You have to tell me. Does Gigi know about the videos?”

Fitz narrows his eyes, either because he thinks Lizzie’s ridiculous or because the guy manning the bar turned on some kind of very irritating strobe light. “What?”

Lizzie glances toward the bathroom, because it’s been three hours with the both of them and she can’t keep it in anymore and she’s never gotten up the courage to ask Gigi herself. “Does she know about the videos? My videos. Does she know about them?”

Lizzie’s a few shots of rum—rum’s what’s in a mai tai, right?—past being able to accurately decipher what Fitz is doing with his face right now, but he looks like he wants to laugh and then hug her and then maybe cry? Or just laugh more? (How does Lydia manage this, it’s unbearable.) 

Fitz sets his beer on the table and glances over her shoulder. “I don’t think she knows about the videos, no. But if you’re asking me if she knows about what happened with you and Darcy? Probably.”

Lizzie drops her head so her hair hangs around her face. She and Fitz haven’t talked about this, like, _at all_ , but she’s drunk enough to make the intuitive but totally unfortunate mental leap: he knew about the videos, he probably saw her confrontation with Darcy, they’re best friends, he probably knows everything. And he thinks that Gigi knows everything too. This is awful.

“This is awful,” Lizzie says. “You think he told her?”

Fitz shrugs his shoulders. His face is still really confusing. “They’re pretty close. And he probably wanted to talk to someone, so.” 

Of all the things Lizzie has let herself imagine about Darcy—not that she spends a lot of time thinking about Darcy (oh god, she spends so much time thinking about Darcy)—his level of unhappiness after their _feelings confession situation_ and whether or not he was upset enough to need consoling afterward are absolutely not among them. She hasn’t sat up at night thinking about it and she hasn’t gone back to rewatch the videos he’s in. She definitely hasn’t spent time reading and rereading the letter he gave her and making note of the pen strokes that seemed heaviest, the ones that seemed _important_. 

(The truth: she has not rewatched the video but she has reread the letter an uncomfortable amount of times, and there’s a spot in the middle— _when I saw you with Wickham_ —where the paper looks nearly torn through. His penmanship isn’t the only thing that she’s been obsessing over these past few weeks.)

Fitz pulls his wrist out of her grasp and holds onto the ends of her fingers. “It’s fine, Lizzie.”

“It’s not fine. I called her brother a _prick_. Should I talk to her about it? Does she hate me? Does she want to duel? That’s what rich people do, right? Duel?” It’s possible that Lizzie’s had more to drink than she thought.

Fitz laughs at her then, because Fitz is the worst and has no empathy. “She doesn’t want to duel you. She wants to be your friend, I think, regardless of the whole deal with her brother.” He lets go of her fingers and picks up his beer, clinking the rim against her empty glass. “How about you take it one Darcy at a time, alright?”

Lizzie opens her mouth to answer but Gigi comes barrelling back to the table, blonde hair trailing behind her. She sets down another mai tai for Lizzy and something equally fruity and ridiculous for herself. “I signed us up for a song!” she says, leaning forward to grab their wrists. “Come on, we’re doing this. Don’t be bitches.”

(Fact: Lizzie and Fitz are either tone-deaf or embarrassed or both and they do little more than hum along in most of the right places, but Gigi’s got this sweet, bright voice and the ability to win over a crowd. She hooks an elbow through Lizzie’s and knocks their hips together and sings _oh, oh, oh_ with a laugh. So no dueling then, Lizzie thinks. _Oh, oh, oh._ )

By the time they leave the bar, Gigi’s steps are as uneven as Lizzie’s and they’ve got their shoulders leaned up against each other’s in Fitz’s backseat. The three of them sing along to the Spice Girls—“Fitz, you’ve got Spice World on your iPod _on purpose_ ”—with all the windows rolled down and after they pour her back into Jane’s apartment building, Lizzie stays at the curb until Fitz’s headlights disappear around the corner. 

++

She gets three emails from Lydia over the weekend, all some variation of, “These videos are lame, let’s hear about your man-action, how did I get cursed with such a dumpy sister?” Lizzie ignores all of them.

On Monday night, Lizzie finally calls her little sister because Jane is still at work and if she gets another text with the word “YOLO” in it, she’ll roll her eyes right out of her head.

“Lizzie!” Lydia answers. “Have you decided to stop being the lamest and actually record something interesting?”

Lizzie rolls her eyes, not quite out of her head. “Thanks, Lydia, love you too.”

Lydia puffs out a breath. “How’s the Darce-hole? Your fans want to know.”

 _Darce-hole._ Jesus. “Please don’t call them that. They’re not fans, they’re just … an audience.” The word “fans” makes Lizzie really uncomfortable. 

“Are you kidding? You have fans, Lizzie. You have _merchandise_.”

“Merchandise?” On the other side of the line, it sounds like Lydia’s destroying a small town, or at the very least her closet. 

Her voice is muffled when she speaks, like she’s pulling a shirt over her head. “Okay, it was just some randos in a tshirt I think they made themselves, but still. You have an obligation to them!”

Lizzie makes a sound slightly more lady-like than a grunt but doesn’t answer. Lydia still sounds like she’s caught in a flurry of cosmetics and costume jewelry. “Are you getting ready to go out right now? It’s a Monday.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Lydia says, “this is why you’re still single.” She doesn’t even say goodbye before she hangs up. Sisters.

Lizzie spends the next day thinking about her videos, and the audience-slash-fans who want to know everything. It’s hard to begrudge them their interest when it’s exactly the thing she was aiming for in the first place. She never thought to hold anything back before, that her life was her life and it was her business to share as much of it as she wanted, but now every time she sits down in front of the camera, it’s different. And it’s not just being at Pemberley and it’s not just the fear of who might see it, though neither of those things are the least bit helpful. Talking about Darcy means acknowledging what happened between them, which is something Lizzie’s been actively trying to avoid. 

She sets up the camera during her lunch break the next day and when she presses record and sits down, her stomach’s tight and her neck’s super tense. Fine. She’ll talk about Darcy.

“Hi guys,” she says. The red light is mocking her. “So, I know that I haven’t talked much about this since I’ve gotten to Pemberley Industries, but since all of you have been wondering: yes, I have seen Darcy.” She chews her lip, and runs her hands through her hair. “He’s been observing a project I’ve been working on for the past week and it’s been—” Lizzie spends the next ten to a hundred seconds trying to find the right word. God, what does this look like on camera? Uncertainty? Fear? Editing this thing to make her look like she’s not a total mess is going to be a nightmare. 

For fuck’s sake, Lizzie thinks. Full disclosure, right? She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. “My name is Lizzie Bennet and I have no idea what to think. I mean—”

She’s interrupted by a knock on her office door. Not for the first time, she thinks maybe she should be recording these at Jane’s instead of an actual workplace, because this isn’t the first time this has happened. Chris had come in the week before and they’d ended up talking about camera settings and sound quality for half an hour. Lizzie sighs. “Come in.”

Because the universe is unfair and still paying her back for any number of sins, her office door opens and Darcy peeks his head in. He looks from her to the camera and back again and she sees him suck in a quick breath. Shit. She spares a wish for the floor to open up and swallow her whole, but there’s no time for wishing when Darcy’s in her office. With his face. And his person. And his face.

“Darcy,” she says. Her spine is immediately ramrod straight. Darcy steps into her office and closes the door behind him and god, the last time this happened it went really badly. Lizzie glances around the room. Does she stay sitting? Stand? Turn off the camera? Crawl under her desk? She’s not emotionally or physically prepared for this.

Darcy takes a step toward her and shoves his hands in his pockets. “If I’d have known you were filming, I’d have worn my hat,” he says. Lizzie immediately does that thing she’s done since she was small, that “hiding her face in mortification” thing that usually comes out around Lydia, but when she looks up at Darcy, he’s—he’s smiling. Just one corner of his mouth, but it doesn’t even look like he’s _trying_.

Lizzie’s breath escapes in a huff. “You crack jokes?” she says.

His smile spreads all the way across his face. One dimple on his right cheek. Just like Gigi. “It has been known to happen.” He rocks back on his heels and shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. Lizzie runs her hands over her knees. (God, are her palms sweating? Her palms are sweating. Jesus.) “I can come back,” he says, “if now’s not a good time.”

“No,” Lizzie’s mouth says, completely independent of her brain. Because the world is spinning backwards on its axis and she _doesn’t_ want to get rid of him as quickly as possible? She clears her throat and gestures toward the camera. “I was just filming a video but if you need something, I can—”

“No, I was just.” He takes another step toward her, almost right to the bench where she’s sitting. He’s probably partly in frame. She wonders if he knows that. She wonders if he cares. “I thought I’d come by and tell you that everyone’s had great things to say about your help with the Rowley campaign. I’ve heard nothing but good things.”

“Oh.” Lizzie’s heart picks up speed in her chest. “Thank you.” She’d been contributing and everything seemed like it was going well, but to hear it out loud is something else. She bites back a smile and tucks her hair behind her ear. When she looks back, Darcy’s grin is smaller but—deeper, maybe? More genuine? Lizzie chews on her lip a second, deciding, and then scoots over a little on the bench. “I was just going to give an update on the company and the project and how thing are going.” Her voice sounds weird but she pushes past it. “You want to sit in?”

Darcy’s eyes widen and Lizzie wants to reach up and grab the words she can almost see still hanging in the air. _You want to sit in?_ Like the last time he did this went so well, like it didn’t end up with him embarrassing himself, her embarrassing him, all over Youtube. (In the back of her head, she hears Lydia oh-so-helpfully reminding her: “Over 300,000 views on this video, Lizzie, see what you get when something interesting actually _happens_ to you?”) Of course he doesn’t want to sit down, what a horrible idea.

But just as she’s opening her mouth to take it back, just as she nearly stands to turn the camera off, she sees him suck in a breath and smile against the flinch in his eyes and take a step forward and sit down. Right beside her. Inches away from where she’s gaping at him open-mouthed. 

Lizzie closes her mouth and sits back. (There’s an entirely empty space where her heart used to be.)

Darcy looks back at her, his expression still a little bit pained, a little bit hesitant. He smooths down his tie (yellow with a grey plaid pattern running through) and says, “So where were you? Your name is Lizzie Bennet and?”

There’s something easy about him when he says it, something less pained and more—not hopeful, not light, not exactly. But the lines at his eyes crinkle into something that could reasonably be called a smile, and Lizzie shakes her head because this is actually her life.

She takes a deep breath and looks into the camera. “My name is Lizzie Bennet and—say hello to Darcy.”

++

It takes her longer than usual to edit her video. She was never the best at it in the first place—Charlotte set a pretty steep curve—but she knows it’s not her software that slows her down.

She does look uncertain. She does look afraid. And the moment she locks eyes on Darcy, all the color sort of drains from her face. (Which is saying something. For a Californian, she’s always maintained an aggressive sunblock regimen.)

But it’s the last bit of video that makes her hands still on her keyboard and her fingers pause over her mouse. Lizzie’s half out of frame, reaching up to turn off the camera, and Darcy’s just visible behind her. It had gone alright, actually. He’d talked about app technology and told a story about the time one of the new security guards wouldn’t let him in because he forgot his badge. Editing those parts had been weird enough—she’d laughed during filming, actually honest-to-god _laughed_ at a story Darcy told—but it’s the last five seconds of footage that stop her short. She’s got one hand reaching out for the camera and he’s got both eyes on her and the look on his face is—

Well, it’s certainly not a face a robot could make.

++++


End file.
